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Ubuntu 12.04 LTS ARMv7 Linux Performance Gains

Phoronix: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS ARMv7 Linux Performance Gains

Earlier in the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" development cycle I noted some performance improvements happening on the ARM side, particularly for Texas Instruments OMAP4. Namely, Ubuntu 12.04 was ARMing up for better performance with ARM hard-float support and the performance becoming more compelling for the PandaBoard ES hardware with proper cpufreq support. In this article is a comparison of the Ubuntu 11.10 and Ubuntu 12.04 ARM performance.

A comparison between GCC and LLVM/Clang is meaningless for us. A better bet could be a comparison between ARMv7 and Atom performance, considering the performance improvements introduced with Ubuntu 12.04. The last time such a comparison was made, Atom won by a small margin. Maybe these performance improvements turn the table...

A comparison between GCC and LLVM/Clang is meaningless for us. A better bet could be a comparison between ARMv7 and Atom performance, considering the performance improvements introduced with Ubuntu 12.04. The last time such a comparison was made, Atom won by a small margin. Maybe these performance improvements turn the table...

I disagree. I think a comparison between various versions of GCC (4.4 - 4.7) + LLVM/Clang would be very helpful for developers trying to decide which compiler to use.

A comparison between GCC and LLVM/Clang is meaningless for us. A better bet could be a comparison between ARMv7 and Atom performance, considering the performance improvements introduced with Ubuntu 12.04. The last time such a comparison was made, Atom won by a small margin. Maybe these performance improvements turn the table...

Well with improvements of around 50% in many tests it's very likely ARM in now faster than Atom on linux. I'd like to see a comparison between Atom , OMAP4 and Zacate on 12.04. A small issue is i guess the storage medium used by the motherboard Michael has.

While the results look interesting there's something that puzzles me though: the first test has no frequency indication and the second is run @ 1.2 GHz... If there's already a difference in clocking speed comparing the two might prove meaningless.

Well with improvements of around 50% in many tests it's very likely ARM in now faster than Atom on linux. I'd like to see a comparison between Atom , OMAP4 and Zacate on 12.04. A small issue is i guess the storage medium used by the motherboard Michael has.

This. It would be nice to see it as a reference point. Also, thermals/power consumption might be interesting!

IIRC, Ubuntu 11.10 does not correctly support the Pandaboard ES, and thus only runs the CPU at a lower clock speed. So this benchmark should be meaningless for the most part. And indeed the performance differences are too consistently worse for Ubuntu 11.10 to be only caused by pure software/library/compiler issues.

While the results look interesting there's something that puzzles me though: the first test has no frequency indication and the second is run @ 1.2 GHz... If there's already a difference in clocking speed comparing the two might prove meaningless.

It's mentioned in the article about the missing cpufreq/clocking on pre-12.04. And in the earlier linked-to articles about the OMAP4460 (PandaBoard ES) upstream support changes.

Earlier in the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" development cycle I noted some performance improvements happening on the ARM side, particularly for Texas Instruments OMAP4. Namely, Ubuntu 12.04 was ARMing up for better performance with ARM hard-float support and the performance becoming more compelling for the PandaBoard ES hardware with proper cpufreq support. In this article is a comparison of the Ubuntu 11.10 and Ubuntu 12.04 ARM performance.